You could use the damn phone as such and call. They even might appreciate it more. (Unless you have to be “chatting” continuously, of course.) And no, nobody really wants to see your face, believe me.
I was am expat in a country that used WhatsApp everywhere. Not using it myself was a huge pain on quite a few occasions, I was nearly forced into making a WhatsApp account when I had to take a Covid test before travel.